


Five Times in America

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter and Gabe Jones watch most of a movie.  Robert Redford plays Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times in America

**Author's Note:**

> "Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings" is checked. The only time I can write straight fluff is if [Steve Rogers and Pepper Potts are slow-dancing in a bar in Brooklyn.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/391094)
> 
> Hint: that doesn't happen here.

In 1966, they make a movie about Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Two years later, you see most of it in a second-run movie theater in Hong Kong while sitting next Gabe Jones, who passes a bag of salted, boiled peanuts back and forth with you. He laughs, from time to time, at the translation they've chosen: it's subtitled in Chinese, with the characters in yellow at the bottom of the screen. He is doing a two year sabbatical teaching English literature at a university here, with only a little bit of working for you on the side, and you remember that Gabe has always been good at languages. 

There are a lot of changes, and without words, you and Gabe make a game of it. When something that's different from actual history happens, whoever is holding the peanut bag has to pass it back to the other person. 

They got rid of Falsworth and Dernier, so that all of the Commandos were American, and you grin and hand the bag to Gabe, who horrified his professors at Howard when he went back at the end of the war, because he'd picked up Dernier's gutter Marseilles accent. James Barnes is a cheerful, teenaged unit mascot universally beloved by the Howling Commandos. You snort with laughter, and Gabe takes the chance to give you the bag so hard that a few peanuts spill into your lap. By the light of the screen, you pick up two and throw them at him, then hand him the whole bag back when they show Dugan with cigarettes, instead of those filthy, disgusting giant black cigars he chews as much as smokes to this day. Gabe gets you, though, when he turns in his seat and watches your reaction all the way until they introduce the love interest, a pretty, brown-haired French resistance fighter who meets Captain America when she holds a machine gun on him. He knocks it down with his shield; she incompetently pulls on him, and he grips her wrist until she drops the pistol. 

You laugh and lean over to Gabe. 

"Have you seen this before?" you ask. 

"Five times in America. Twice here so far." 

"All you do in the movie is set jokes up for Dugan."

Gabe grins a little and hands the bag of peanuts back to you, because a close-up has just shown Morita with an item of communications equipment that didn't come into use by the Army until, you'd estimate, around the Korean War. You promptly hand it back to him because Howard Stark, in this movie, is roughly the same height as Steve: this was empirically untrue, but you're guessing that the executive producer credit got Stark something. 

"I get a good scene later on with a grenade," Gabe says, and you throw a peanut that bounces off his shoulder. 

"Did they kill you off?"

He grins enigmatically.

The two of you are the only ones in the movie theater, so you don't feel bad about talking; it's eleven on a weekday morning, and Gabe has explained that in first-run theaters in Hong Kong, good seats on a balcony like this cost more than the seats that are right under the screen or in the back, where the view is obstructed. No usher here to take people to their seats or make sure nobody is trying to sneak into a better seat. In fact, you're pretty sure the peanuts cost more than both of your tickets to this movie. 

You've noticed, by the way, that the movie has no mention of the serum: they've kept that part classified. As far as the American public knows, Steve Rogers has always been tall, has only ever had people admire and automatically respect him. 

"Who is this guy?" you say to Gabe.

"Redford. He's good. Did you see _Barefoot in the Park_ , with him and Fonda?" 

You spent the last few years -- working, so you haven't, and this far out from your past, the film makers and Howard Stark forgetting the facts doesn't hurt. It's funny more than anything else, but at this point, Gabe suddenly turns his head away from you. You watch him for moment. He doesn't move, so you don't move. Then, slowly, soundlessly, you slide your hand into your purse.

It might be eleven in the morning, and this might be mostly a social call, but you and Gabe Jones haven't survived this long in the game without picking up some degree of craft, some element of instinct. When Gabe bought the peanuts from the vendor, he slipped a handful of leftover shells into a handkerchief and scattered them on the stairs to the balcony where the two of you are sitting. In the dark, who could see them? With the movie, who would expect Gabe, through the banter, to be listening for that sound? He takes this seat every time he comes because of a quirk in how sound echoes in the stairway that lets him hear, with clarity, even very small noises. 

Someone is coming up the stairs. 

You close your hand around a gun. 

...

Eight minutes later, you have shot all but two of the bullets in your gun, and you have to make a decision between continuing to hold Gabe Jones's viscera inside him or going after the Winter Soldier. Gabe, you know, has decent odds of dying if you don't stay with him. It's a war movie. Nobody is going to notice a few extra loud bangs. Now, Gabe is breathing shallow. In flashes of light from the screen, you can see his face, twisted in agony. He makes low, whimpering noises, and when you pull away a little, he tries to hang onto your right hand: he doesn't want to die alone, but his hands are slick with blood, so you yank away and wipe your fingers on the wall. 

You go after the Winter Soldier: you recognized the slightly stiff way he moved his left arm. You heard the cut-off Russian when you winged him in the right shoulder. Who else could get off as many close, well-aimed shots in the dark after being surprised but the Red Room's deadliest shooter? You may not be as young and strong and fast as you were, but you've gained other traits in the years in between, Peggy Carter.

The cleaning crew finds Gabe, bled out and cold on the floor: the movie was a long time before.

So was Steve Rogers.

**Author's Note:**

> Many moons ago, [Destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics) came up with Gabe Jones, college professor, getting murdered by Bucky Barnes.. We always talked about in the context of Bucky sitting through one of Gabe's big intro-level lectures at college and then walking up to him and stone-cold killing him in the auditorium, but then this happened.


End file.
